


i love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest

by fraybanes



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Love Quotes, hmmm idk how to tag this actually, they are just in love!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21711334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraybanes/pseuds/fraybanes
Summary: The Shadowhunters have their own saying about love: Nephilim love once. Isabelle lives in fear of the day she feels its deceptive pull.
Relationships: Clary Fray/Isabelle Lightwood
Comments: 11
Kudos: 56
Collections: shadowhunters sapphic ficathon





	i love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest

**Author's Note:**

> written for the Shadowhunters Sapphic Ficathon! the prompt I used was the quote by Hermann Hesse.
> 
> this was fun to write, but I sort of wrote and edited it in a daze so sorry for any mistakes. hope you enjoy (and participate in the ficathon if you can! @shsapphicfics on twitter)!
> 
> (all quotes, including title, that aren't from the show are credited in end notes)

Isabelle Lightwood gives up on love the first time she overhears her father talking on the phone with another woman.

She freezes outside his office, presses herself against the wall and listens. She tells herself it’s to make sure before she bursts in and accuses him of something he would obviously never do, but even in the moment she knows, somehow, that there is no chance she’s misheard.

He laughs softly, in a way he’s never laughed with Mom before, and says something. Izzy will read the near-exact quote in a book later.

_ “My love for her is like foliage in the woods: time will change it, as winter changes trees. My love for you is the immortal rocks beneath.” _

He recites it wrong. Maybe he doesn’t want the woman to know he’s reciting at all. But he mixes up the order, skips over words, says her name at the end of it like it’s the most important part. And Izzy runs away crying in a way she hasn’t for years and years.  It’s not until nearly a year later, when she’s sitting on the floor at the foot of Jace’s bed, flipping absently through one of his books while he lies on the bed with a healing wound on his side, getting lectured by Alec, that she sees the quote and realizes Dad was reciting at all.

In a moment of indescribable rage and hurt, she throws the book across the room. She plays it off as getting frustrated by their bickering, and leaves before they can pry the truth from her.

Magnus holds out the necklace of the lover he can’t bear to look at anymore to Isabelle and reads,  _ true love never dies _ .

And the books and the stories and the poets and the romantics all say that too, don’t they? Do they know how untrue that is when they say it? Or is it merely an expectation they don’t realize their relationships can never live up to? She thinks about Jace’s voice when he says  _ to love is to destroy _ and Dad’s voice when he quoted the book to his mistress and the necklace she wears almost every day now, and she wonders if that’s all life is: reciting lies someone else told you about love until, inevitably, you start to question whether it ever existed at all.

The Shadowhunters have their own saying about love: _Nephilim love once._

Isabelle lives in fear of the day she feels its deceptive pull for the first — and only — time.

Unless that’s a lie, too.

Meliorn kisses her neck and says,  _ you are the most exquisite woman in the world _ .

And she wonders, as her heart leaps and she craves his touch more than anything, if her time has come, if this is what love is.

Clary brings Simon back, selfishly, and cries when she says,  _ I can’t live without you! _

Is this what love is?

Raphael looks more disappointed than Izzy has ever seen anyone, and he shakes his head at the tip of the blade she’s pressed to his chest and says, quietly, unyielding,  _ oh, Isabelle… _

Is this what love is?

Alec’s nails dig into the skin of his palm where he sits at Magnus' bedside and whispers, over and over,  _ I’m sorry, baby, I'm so sorry _ .

Is this what love is?

Magnus’ smile falters as he takes one final look at them all before turning back to the portal, and he doesn’t say anything.

Is this what love is?

And then her time comes.

Isabelle Lightwood falls in love.

She’s grown so cynical, so afraid, so good at ending things before they’ve begun, that she doesn’t realize it until long after it’s already happened with no way to turn back. She doesn’t realize it until Clary is looking at her nervously, sounding almost close to tears, and asking Izzy to bind her soul with hers.

The scariest part is that when Izzy says,  _ I was thinking of asking you the very same thing _ , she means it. She  _ was _ , and she hadn’t even questioned it, what it could mean. For a while now, she had considered herself and Clary as an  _ us  _ first, an inseparable unit . She had wanted them to share more than secrets, she had wanted them to share joy and pain alike. She had wanted to be able to call Clary by a name, a word, a title that only _she_ could call her by. She had wanted the loss she had felt when Simon and Jace had met them halfway in the stairwell, shaking as they told them Clary was gone, to have come with a warning, a physical ache. She had felt possessive — how  _ dare  _ they know first? How dare they feel her absence longer? How dare they look her in the eyes and tell her that she didn’t understand, that it wasn’t the same?

She holds Clary by the arm, gazing into her eyes, and starts to feel a little less skeptical about all those quotes and sayings and declarations.

She kisses Clary on the lips and starts to understand them.

She slips a pretty little ring on Clary’s finger and starts to quote her own.

Her favourite she puts into her vows, though she keeps the details of its significance to her private. Clary cries when she hears it. Izzy cries, too. And Mom, and Jace, even some of the guests who don’t know them as well.

_ “If I know what love is, it is because of you.” _

If this is what love is — this unconditional dedication, this need to see Clary smile, the safety her embrace brings, the desire to be one with her in every way and never worry about the end, the knowledge that only she can say _my wife_ and mean Clary — then it’s the most terrifying thing Izzy has ever faced.

And she doesn’t mind one bit.

**Author's Note:**

> quote credits, in order of appearance:
> 
> "I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest."  
> -William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
> 
> "My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary." (modified for this work)  
> -Emily Bronte, "Wuthering Heights"
> 
> "If I know what love is, it is because of you."  
> -Hermann Hesse


End file.
